Can you claim massage and physiotherapy on your taxes?

Only the part nobody paid you back for

This is the rule everything else hangs off. If your plan covered 80% of a $100 physiotherapy visit, the $80 is not yours to claim. The $20 you paid is.

The Canada Revenue Agency lists money you were reimbursed for, or will be reimbursed for, among the things people wrongly put on a return.

There is one exception. If the reimbursement was added to your income as a taxable benefit and you did not deduct it somewhere else, the whole expense is back in play.

Massage depends on the province you were treated in

The credit only counts money paid to an authorized medical practitioner, and who qualifies is set by the province or territory where the treatment happened rather than by where you live. It is different for every profession.

• Registered massage therapists count in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Prince Edward Island. Nowhere else. The same receipt from the same therapist is claimable in Toronto and worth nothing in Calgary.
• Physiotherapists and chiropractors count everywhere except the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
• Psychotherapists count in Ontario and Quebec. Psychologists count everywhere.
• Acupuncturists count in Alberta, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Quebec. Naturopaths count in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

The CRA publishes the full list by profession and province and updates it. If your treatment is not in the four above, look yours up rather than assuming it works the same way.

There is a floor, and for most people it moves with income

You do not get credit on everything you spent. You get it on what is left after subtracting the smaller of two numbers: 3% of your net income, or a fixed ceiling that was $2,890 for 2026 and is adjusted every year.

The fixed ceiling only comes into it above roughly $96,000 of net income. Below that, 3% is the smaller number, so the floor rises as you earn more. On a $60,000 income it is about $1,800 before anything counts at all.

The floor is why a single year of massage appointments rarely reaches it on its own. What gets a household there is usually dental work, prescriptions, or a year when somebody was ill.

You choose which twelve months

This is the part almost nobody knows, and it is the most useful thing on this page.

The claim covers any twelve-month period ending in the tax year, as long as nothing in it was claimed last year. The period does not have to be January to December.

So a crown in December and a root canal the following January land in different tax years if you take the calendar, and in the same claim if you choose the window that holds both. You re-choose it every year and nothing carries forward.

It comes off tax you owe

The medical expense credit is non-refundable. It reduces what you owe and pays nothing to somebody who owes nothing.

The federal credit is 15% of the amount above the floor. Ontario adds its own at 5.05%, so an Ontario resident sees roughly 20 cents back per dollar above the floor. A thousand dollars above the floor is worth about $200 off the tax bill.

There is a separate refundable supplement that does pay out, aimed at lower working income. It has its own thresholds and its own line on the return.

What you have to keep

Nothing is filed with your return. You keep it, normally for six years, and produce it if the CRA asks.

A receipt has to show who was paid, what the payment was for, the date, and the name of the patient. Where a practitioner had to prescribe the treatment, that has to be available too. The CRA can also ask for proof of payment such as a bank or credit card statement.

An insurer's claim record is a useful way to find what you spent and where. It is not a receipt, because it does not carry everything on that list.

Where to check your own situation

Everything above is the general rule and none of it is advice about your return. The CRA publishes the full guide, the authorized practitioner list by province, and the current year's figures, and all three change.

If the numbers are close to the floor, or somebody in the household had an expensive year, it is worth an hour with an accountant. The window rule alone can be worth more than the fee.

What Benloop does

Benloop links with your insurer’s account on your behalf and puts your plan on one screen: every service you are covered for, what is left in each, and the date it resets. It reminds you before those dates arrive, while there is still time to book.

Because it reads what your plan paid on each claim, it also knows what it did not pay. That is the number this page is about, and it is the one part of a tax return nobody can look up for you.